My Space for Parents

Matt Gullett writes a thoughtful post about making connections in library MySpace classes:

http://youthtech.wordpress.com/2006/10/15/myspace-for-parents-pt-2/

I had one very thankful mother of a daughter that has had problems in the past with her MySpace page and usage. They are about to allow her access again and just want to make sure that they know what they are getting into. She seemed to be a very concerned parent that wanted to allow for some freedom and flexibility, but also wanted to keep her daughter safe and honest to who she is. Honest in the sense of things that she was writing and communicating, etc.

On another occasion I had four moms from the same bible study. They were all very interested and engaged. In fact, the workshop lasted a full 2 hours. It is only suppose to go an hour. In the process of all that went on that evening we looked up one of the mother’s daughter’s MySpace page, and the mother had never seen it before. I was a bit nervous about doing that, but her daughter’s, who is a freshman/soph. in college, page looked fine. It had nothing really shocking or out of the ordinary for a typical young adult in their late teens/early twenties. It also allowed us the opportunity to go over how to search for their child’s MySpace page.

Read the whole post. Are you offering similar classes for your users (especially public library folk?) – is there interest? I really see the need for librarians teaching technology classes to evaluate their course offerings and make sure they are up to date.